Tuesday, January 14, 2003
USB 2.0 or Firewire? Neither (for now).
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 12:59 PM
I have an opinion piece brewing in my head about Pocket PC performance in general, but I wonder how long it will be before we see the first USB 2.0-based Pocket PC? Firewire would be an awesome choice for speed and peer to peer functionality, but it won't happen for years to come (if ever). Why? As much as I like Firewire, and I really do, there simply aren't enough PCs out there with Firewire ports yet. PCs have been shipping with USB ports as standard fare for years, but today it's possible to buy a PC without a Firewire port (they're usually only found on laptops and high-end systems). Until every new PC sold has a Firewire port on it, we'll never see a Firewire-based Pocket PC.
So that leaves us with USB 2.0. It's certainly fast enough for pretty much anything we could throw at a Pocket PC, but guess what? I'm willing to bet that we won't see USB 2.0-based Pocket PCs until at least 2004. Why? The same reason I mentioned above - USB 2.0 needs a higher market penetration before the OEMs will consider it worthwhile to include it. Although perhaps in late 2003 we'll see a high-end Pocket PC offering USB 2.0 as a differntiating factor.
Microsoft also needs to radically redesign ActiveSync to support real transfer speeds - right now the USB functionality is actually a hybrid driver sitting atop the serial port driver...hence you'll never see true USB speeds. Strangely enough, when I did some tests with my Pocket PC connected to a USB 2.0 hub, I clocked a 10% speed increase. Strange? Definitely.
At any rate, as frustrating as it is for all of us, USB 1.x will be with us for a while longer on the Pocket PC.
So that leaves us with USB 2.0. It's certainly fast enough for pretty much anything we could throw at a Pocket PC, but guess what? I'm willing to bet that we won't see USB 2.0-based Pocket PCs until at least 2004. Why? The same reason I mentioned above - USB 2.0 needs a higher market penetration before the OEMs will consider it worthwhile to include it. Although perhaps in late 2003 we'll see a high-end Pocket PC offering USB 2.0 as a differntiating factor.
Microsoft also needs to radically redesign ActiveSync to support real transfer speeds - right now the USB functionality is actually a hybrid driver sitting atop the serial port driver...hence you'll never see true USB speeds. Strangely enough, when I did some tests with my Pocket PC connected to a USB 2.0 hub, I clocked a 10% speed increase. Strange? Definitely.
At any rate, as frustrating as it is for all of us, USB 1.x will be with us for a while longer on the Pocket PC.
